The National recorded and self-produced their new album at Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, New York, according to an announcement. The artwork, above, shows an optical illusion where it looks like a woman’s head is made up of two top halves and totally disconnected from her body — the better to see, hear, and smell you with, my dear.

In the announcement, frontman Matt Berninger suggests the album was the result of an increasingly assured band, which had spent 22 months on the road supporting High Violet. “For the past 10 years we’d been chasing something, wanting to prove something,” he’s quoted as saying. “After touring High Violet, it felt like we’d finally gotten there. Now we could relax — not in terms of our own expectations, but we didn’t have to prove our identity any longer.”

The National’s guitarist, Aaron Dessner, also quoted in the announcement, compared the recording process to the band’s early days. He said that then as now “our ideas would immediately click with each other. It’s free-wheeling again. The songs on one level are our most complex, and on another they’re our most simple and human. It just feels like we’ve embraced the chemistry we have.”

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